Information
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What is Occupational Therapy?Occupational Therapists use your child's sense of touch, hearing, vision, and movement to help them learn about the world around them. An Occupational Therapist looks at several areas of your child's development.FINE MOTOR SKILLSHow your child uses their hands, if they use their hands equally, can they follow simple directions when manipulating objects, how they manipulate a pencil, marker, or scissors and can they use both of they hands together to complete a task.MOVEMENTHow strong your child is, how good his/her balance is and how he/she moves around.SENSORY PROCESSINGHow your child takes in stimuli from the environment through all of the senses, process this information, and acts productively with the information upon the environment.VISUAL PROCESSINGHow your child processes the visual input that is presented to them. Some of these areas include visual motor integration, visual discrimination, spatial relationships, visual closure, and visual memory.What is Speech-Language Therapy?Speech and Language therapy is the evaluation and treatment of communication disorders including difficulties with articulation, language, fluency, voice/resonance, and swallowing.ARTICULATIONArticulation disorders involve difficulty producing speech sounds, both consonants and vowel, in isolation, syllables, words, sentences, and conversation. Articulation of speech sounds involve the use of articulators including the lips, teeth, tongue, jaw, soft palate, and larynx. These speech sound errors can impact the ability to be understood by others.LANGUAGELanguage disorders may include both difficulty with receptive language (i.e., how language is understood) and expressive language (i.e., how language is used). Areas addressed include but are not limited to following directions, answering and asking questions, comprehension and use of grammar, social language skills, understanding and using figurative language, auditory comprehension, word retrieval, and vocabulary.FLUENCYFluency disorders involve the disruption of the flow of speech (e.g., stuttering) such as repetitions, prolongations, and hesitations.VOICE/RESONANCEVoice/Resonance disorders involve the quality of the voice including nasality, pitch, tone, and volume.SWALLOWINGSwallowing disorders involve difficulty with feeding and swallowing.
What is Physical Therapy?
Physical therapist helps children develop and improve their gross motor function as well as helps them move safely and independently throughout the school facilities.
A physical therapist monitors and assesses many areas of a child's development including:
GROSS MOTOR
Larger movement skills. Most common gross motor skills are walking, running and jumping.
MOBILITY THROUGHOUT THE SCHOOL FACILITIES
A PT looks at how safely and independently a child is able to move through the building, gets on and off the bus, and navigates playground equipment.
POSITIONING IN THE CLASSROOM
Along with other therapists, a PT may help assess for more supportive positioning devices if needed.
ASSISTIVE DEVICES FOR MOBILITY
A PT will often assess the need of assistive devices if a child needs assistance to navigate through the building.
Related Files
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What is Speech-Language Therapy?
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